Achieving stability of organic oils in aqueous products such as beverages, colognes and perfumes, paints, organic pesticides, cosmetics and other skin-care products, certain pharmaceuticals, and other oil based products, has long been a challenge to manufacturers.
Achieving this stability has been a goal for manufacturers of edible products, because of the necessity to avoid organic solvents in products such as beverages or foods. The beverage industry, for example, has an intense need for stable aqueous dispersions of organic compounds. Their dispersions must withstand high dilution, long storage, carbonation, and wide temperature variations. The instability caused by these factors usually results in either ringing or settling of the organics in the beverage. Consumers find these results unappealing, as beverages so affected are less than optimally attractive and provide uneven taste.
Accordingly, the beverage flavor industry has developed emulsion systems which are combinations of materials used to raise the specific gravity of the organic oil, and which use natural and synthetic surfactants as emulsifiers. Raising the oil's specific gravity promotes improved stability and more even dispersion of the oil in an aqueous medium. The most commonly used material for this purpose is brominated vegetable oils ("BVO"). Gum arabic is the most commonly employed emulsifier. Due to toxicity concerns, some governments have severely limited the use of BVOs in beverages to a concentration far lower than what is necessary to achieve stability of the flavor oil. Industry chemists have searched fruitlessly for an acceptable BVO substitute. The closest viable substitute has been ester gum. Substitution of ester gum for most of the BVO, however, has not produced reliably stable emulsions.
Replacements for ester gum, such as synthetic gums, other natural gums, and modified food starches, have also failed to produce reliably stable emulsions.
Because of these instability problems, flavor oil manufacturers can only ship concentrations of up to around 5% to 8% oil (w/w in water) to bottlers. Beyond this concentration range, the limits of stability and viscosity are breached, and the oil separates into phases.
One of the most informative dissertations on this organic oil stability problem remains "Manufacture and Analysis of Carbonated Beverages", by Morris B. Jacobs, PhD., Chemical Publishing Co., Inc., NY, N.Y. (1956). Teaching on the subject has not advanced significantly since his work.
It is an object of this invention to provide a formulation and formulating system which can provide stable, high-concentration aqueous dispersions for a large variety of organic compounds. It has been discovered, according to this invention, that organic solvents for organic materials in aqueous media are replaced by a combination of stabilizing agents that are non-toxic and, when mixed in the right proportions, provide remarkably higher concentrations of organic oils in aqueous media.